Black tribal sleeve tattoo with bold geometric bands, triangles and zigzags covering the upper arm and forearm.

Black tribal arm sleeve

Blackwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A full arm sleeve of black tribal-style patterns covers the upper arm and forearm, made of solid black shapes, bands, triangles, zigzags and dotted rows. The linework is bold and sharp, with large areas of solid black ink and clean negative space in the skin. The image is entirely black and grey, with the arm shown at a slight angle against a plain white top.

Blackwork Geometric Upper arm Forearm Tribal Polynesian Triangle Zigzag Dot Band Chevron

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bread has been proving since four, and the cook's mate is already shouting for tins, so you have no time to look at the chart pinned above the range. It shows the Tuamotus in ink gone soft at the edges, a scatter of atolls like spilt rice. Captain Hennessy keeps it there to remind the crew that the sea does not care what the Admiralty has been told.

Keep reading

Tomasi from Apia does his sums on the back of order slips with a stub of pencil. He draws the way his grandmother drew on the walls of her house: bands that run round and round, a row of triangles pointing like teeth, zigzags that stand for swell, and dots for every day to port. Last night he showed you how the pattern closed back on itself at the end of the sheet, so that you could start anywhere and still arrive home.

The weather turns at two bells. The pans slide off the hooks, the tea urn walks across the deck, and the flour bin tips against your hip. Tomasi is braced in the doorway with one hand on the rail, shouting the bearing over the din. A slip flies off the table and lands face up in the gravy. Through the grease you can still make out the zigzags, and the dots marching in a line that bends exactly where the reef bends on the chart.

When the swell eases, you peel the slip out of the gravy and pin it beside the atolls. Tomasi reads it and grunts, satisfied. Then he takes the knife from you and cuts the morning loaf into wedges, and every slice comes out with three sharp corners, pointing the way the ship should go.